The amount of whining and complaining I see in this forum about the $40 advertisement is mind-boggling. Here's a company, sonic, who has made it their business model to bring affordable, business speed Internet access to home users. in order to do so they currently need to include the phone line to be considered a utility.If you go to the sonic webpage there is no hiding of the fact that additional taxes have to be paid. On the contrary, you can look up exactly what the taxes are for your city.For of $40 per month plus taxes for the phone line and the cost for the router (which you do not need to have) you get:

super high-speed Internet accessnet neutrality ( total privacy by sonic deleting all your data every two weeks)free VPN servicephone line with free calls to 60 countries and free number portabilitya free fax line for incoming and outgoing faxes free web hosting and even a free domain

and people still complain? I find that absolutely unbelievable. Even if people don't need to phone and maybe never use the phone ( and I am not sure why they wouldn't you can even install the app on your mobile phone and make and receive calls on your mobile phone which might come in handy especially for international calls), the price for 1 Gb up-and-down is still unbelievably cheap.

The total price for what we get may very well be a good price. But that price is not $40. The complaints are about the deceptive pricing. Fine print about taxes and fees being extra, and having to pay for equipment you don't need don't change the fact that Sonic is advertising a $40 price point when it knows that the actual price people will pay is significantly more.

There are plenty of threads about being forced to bundle phone service, which then comes with assorted taxes and allows Sonic to charge a $6.50 fee (which they can then call a "fee" instead of a "charge" and can therefore not include it in the $40 advertised price). So I'll look at the other deceptive element of the $40 marketing claim. The $40 amount is based on the regular $50 price minus a $10 credit. However, in order to get the $10 credit, you are required to pay $9.50 for equipment rental. That equipment is not actually required for service (mine is sitting in a box because my bill is 50 cents cheaper than if I send it back). So Sonic has built in a requirement to spend $59.50 in order to get the $10 credit. Even without counting the phone taxes and fees you cannot get service for less than $49.50 and Sonic knows this.

But Sonic again has found a way of obfuscating what they call their charges so that they meet whatever the minimum legal requirements are for advertising that $40 price. But meeting those minimum legal requirements isn't the same as being honest. Sonic tries to present itself as a more ethical business model than it's competition. Which is why people who got their hopes up are so disappointed when it turns out that Sonic is playing the same dishonest marketing games as everyone else.

I cannot help but to find all these complaints about pricing completely unreasonable. It is completely unrealistic to expect a small company that just invested millions into bringing high-speed Internet access to home users to give you a $10 discount for one year and to not tie to the modem. You should count your blessing that sonic allows you to not use their modem to begin with the other fiber providers do not even offer this option and you are stuck with their crappy modem/router.The modem is not provided so sonic can charge you $9.50, it is provided so it is possible for their support team to easily help you and diagnose problems which will be harder and in some cases impossible to do if you run your own.The other advantage that renting the modem gives you (and I did not know this either) is, that as long as you rent the modem all sonic on site visit are included for free even if the problem turns out to be your fault or your equipment's fault. good luck finding this with any other provider. Also good luck to find another provider that offers local phone support and to find a provider where you can reach the CEO via email or in the forum. If sonic would have a slightly more shady business model (like all other ISPs who sell customer data, hand data over to the government when ask, charge extra for better service for vendors, etc) Dane (CEO) could probably sit at home and count bundles of money while you try to reach any live person to talk to who gives a shit about their product. I find nothing shady about these offerings, everything is very transparently listed on the website. I don't work for sonic nor am I affiliated with them in any way shape or form. But I'm really embarrassed about all this whining and complaining for this amazing service and offering.

@cmeisel -We seem to be talking at cross purposes. I am saying that Sonic's $40 marketing is deceptive because it is not the actual price customers have to pay (my bill is $63 and change). You counter by saying that the price a customer actually pays is still a good price for what they get. Those are not mutually exclusive options. If that $63 for fiber internet is a good price, that still doesn't make the $40 marketing campaign any more honest. If Sonic had an honest marketing campaign that said "Here is what we provide for about $63" people wouldn't be complaining about deceptive pricing. I get that you want to support Sonic. I want to be able to also. Which is why I want Sonic's advertising to reflect the values that I had hoped it operated under.

well i just realized that im paying $73+/mo while digging around my account and this forum after several days of packet loss issues wondering if i would be happier with a slower connection since w/o low latency i cant game anyway

support says there's no issues. i send screenshots, ping outputs. im trying to help troubleshoot but no joy.

sonic should just monitor which of their customers keeps clicking on their speedtest.net link... that should be a early warning system that something's up. rather than relying on multiple customers to get annoyed to start making enough noise to be considered a "widespread" issue.

I've been an ardent ( and will continue to be ) supporter of Sonic but when I realized my crappy internet speeds with Sonic was costing me $100/month, I had to let them go. Yes, I went with Comcast with their shittastic service, but at least it's only $10/month ( Internet Essentials ) for essentially the same speed...

I told Sonic that I didn't really feel happy subsidizing all of their Fiber customers when I literally have to pay $100/month to get $10/month service in terms of speed (Fusion X2 12Mbpsx2 vs 15Mbps Comcast)

Thankfully, at my other location, I'm getting 50Mbps/25Mbps speeds through VDSL, so I'm keeping that to support Sonic.

Tacostacostacos wrote:Sonic is unable to reasonable anticipate what your cost will be for their fiber service. $40 dollars is the lowest price they can actually guarantee.

After that, there's voice-related taxes that vary not only month-to-month, but location to location. There is also an OPTIONAL router rental.

Do you actually expect them to post every conceivable scenario on a truck?

This is why the trucks generally read "From $40", I assume...

Actually, they can 100% guarantee that the price will be greater than $40. It is absolutely impossible under any circumstances for anyone to have a bill lower than $56 and Sonic knows this because Sonic requires additional charges and fees--regardless of what your local taxes might be.-100% guarantee that they will charge you their $6.50 "Federal Line Subscriber" fee. (And while the Fed allows them to charge this fee, this is a Sonic charge that Sonic is choosing to assess and keep out of their $40 advertised amount.)-100% guarantee that they will require you to rent their $9.50 router if you want the $10 temporary discount off the regular $50 price.

So while there are voice related taxes that vary by location, those are added on top of that minimum $56 a month charge. And while you are technically correct that customers have an option not to rent that $9.50 router, if they do so then they cannot get the $10 off and so then their minimum cost per month will be $56.50 instead of $56.00.

Bottom line: that $40/month number on the trucks is a lie 100% of the time for 100% of Sonic customers.

Well, “from $40” is still accurate. And in my location, I’m getting VDSL (at about 35Mbps) and it’s at an intro rate of $30/mo! That’s lower than the $40 you’re complaining about. It’s a smoking deal, even with the taxes and fees. So there’s that.